The
Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the HolocaustDays of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (DRVH) is an
annual 8-day period designated by the
United States CongressUnited States Congress for civic
commemorations and special educational programs that help citizens
remember and draw lessons from the Holocaust. The annual DRVH period
normally begins on the Sunday before the Jewish observance of Yom
HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, and continues through the following
Sunday, usually in April or May. A National Civic Commemoration is
held in Washington, D.C., with state, city, and local ceremonies and
programs held in most of the fifty states, and on U.S. military ships
and stations around the world. The
United StatesUnited States Holocaust Memorial
Museum designates a theme for each year's programs, and provides
materials to help support remembrance efforts.
A House Joint resolution 1014 designated April 28 and 29 of 1979 as
"Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust." Senator John
Danforth of Missouri, had originated the resolution, chose April 28
and 29, because it was on these dates, in 1945, that American troops
— including at least one ethnically segregated artillery battalion
of the U.S. Army, many of whose own relatives were themselves interned
during the war on American soil — liberated the Dachau concentration
camp and a number of its satellite camps, as well as rescuing hundreds
of Jewish-ethnicity camp inmates driven southwards from Dachau by the
Nazis on a death march only days later.
In 2005, the
United NationsUnited Nations established a different date for
International Holocaust Remembrance Day,[1] Jan. 27 — the day in
1945 when the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau
concentration camp — but the
Yom HaShoahYom HaShoah date of Nisan 27 on the
Hebrew calendarHebrew calendar continues as the date for the determination of the
8-day DRVH commemoration. This date also links the DRVH to the
anniversary of the
Warsaw GhettoWarsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.[2]

Background[edit]
6/22/1978 - OFFICIAL TITLE AS INTRODUCED: A resolution designating
April 28 and 29 of 1979 as "Days of Remembrance of Victims of the
Holocaust" Senator John Danforth of Missouri, whom I commend for
having originated the resolution, chose April 28 and 29, because it
was on these dates, in 1945, that American troops liberated the Dachau
concentration camp
H.J.RES.1014 Latest Title: A resolution designating April 28 and 29 of
1979 as "Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust". Sponsor:
Rep Wright, James C., Jr. [TX-12] (introduced 6/22/1978) Cosponsors
(3) Latest Major Action: 9/18/1978 Public Law 95-371.
On November 1, 1978, President
Jimmy CarterJimmy Carter signed an Executive Order
establishing the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, to be
chaired by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Its mandate was to
investigate the creation and maintenance of a memorial to victims of
the Holocaust and an appropriate annual commemoration in their memory.

Executive Order 12093, November 1, 1978:

1-201. The Commission shall submit a report to the President and the
Secretary of the Interior containing its recommendation with respect
to the establishment and maintenance of an appropriate memorial to
those who perished in the Holocaust.
1-202. The Commission's report shall examine the feasibility of
obtaining funds for creation and maintenance of the Memorial through
contributions of the American people.
1-203. The Commission shall recommend appropriate ways for the nation
to commemorate April 28 and 29, 1979, which the Congress has resolved
shall be called "Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust."

On April 24, 1979, in anticipation of the Commission's report, the
first National Civic Commemoration was held in the Capitol Rotunda,
with the address delivered by President Carter:

Although words do pale, yet we must speak. We must strive to
understand. We must teach the lessons of the Holocaust. And most of
all, we ourselves must remember.
We must learn not only about the vulnerability of life, but of the
value of human life. We must remember the terrible price paid for
bigotry and hatred and also the terrible price paid for indifference
and for silence....
To truly commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, we must harness the
outrage of our memories to banish all human oppression from the world.
We must recognize that when any fellow human being is stripped of
humanity; when any person is turned into an object of repression;
tortured or defiled or victimized by terrorism or prejudice or racism,
then all human beings are victims, too.
The world's failure to recognize the moral truth forty years ago
permitted the Holocaust to proceed. Our generation--the generation of
survivors--will never permit the lesson to be forgotten.

On September 27, 1979, the Commission presented its report to the
President, recommending the establishment of a national Holocaust
memorial museum in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. with three main components: a
national museum/memorial, an educational foundation, and a Committee
on Conscience.[3]
The
United StatesUnited States Holocaust Memorial Council (USHMC) was established
in 1980 by Public Law 96-388 to coordinate an annual, national civic
commemoration of the DRVH in Washington, D.C.; to oversee the creation
of the
United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum and to provide support
for State and local civic ceremonies in each of the fifty states.
Since 1984, the
United StatesUnited States military has also taken part in DRVH
ceremonies.[4]
The first Council-sponsored DRVH national civic commemoration was held
on April 30, 1981, in the White House. President Ronald Reagan, making
his first public appearance after recovering from an attempted
assassination, said:

We remember the suffering and the death of Jews and all those others
who were persecuted in World War II.... We commemorate the days of
April in 1945 when American and Allied Troops liberated Nazi death
camps.... The tragedy...took place...in our life time. We share the
wounds of the survivors. We recall the pain only because we must never
permit it to come again.... Our spirit is strengthened by remembering
and our hope is in our strength.[4]

With some few exceptions, the annual National Civic Commemoration has
taken place in the Capitol Rotunda, chosen as the appropriate venue,
as described in these words by Senator Robert Byrd, the U.S. Senate
Minority Leader, delivered during the 1986 ceremony:

Today the Congress of the
United StatesUnited States pauses in its deliberations to
take part in the Days of Remembrance of victims of the Holocaust.
As we briefly lay aside the problems and the promises confronting our
nation today to memorialize the supreme tragedy of more than forty
years ago, there is no more appropriate location in which to do this
than here in the Capitol Rotunda. This Rotunda is the symbol of all
that the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust tried to eliminate: human
rights, individual liberties, the independence of nations living in
freedom.
Our holding this ceremony here symbolizes the ultimate triumph of
these values, which other democratic nations also cherish, over the
unspeakable negation of those principles embodied by the Holocaust.
At the close of the 1987 commemoration, the words of Rabbi Arnold
Resnicoff's prayer expressed the goals of the DRVH in spiritual terms:

So, from the Holocaust, we learn:
when we deny humanity in others, we destroy humanity within ourselves.
When we reject the human, and the holy, in any neighbor's soul, then
we unleash the beast, and the barbaric, in our own heart.
And, since the Holocaust, we pray: if the time has not yet dawned when
we can all proclaim our faith in God, then let us say, at least, that
we admit we are not gods ourselves. If we cannot yet see the face of
God in others, then let us see, at least,
a face as human as our own.[5]
Defining the Holocaust[edit]
In 1979, the President's Commission on the Holocaust provided the
following definition to help guide the Council and its observances:

The HolocaustThe Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic annihilation of six
million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators as a central act of
state during the Second World War; as night descended, millions of
other peoples were swept into this net of death. It was a crime unique
in the annals of human history, different not only in the quantity of
violence -- the sheer numbers killed -- but in its manner and purpose
as a mass criminal enterprise organized by the state against
defenseless civilian populations. The decision to kill every Jew
everywhere in Europe: the definition of Jew as target for death
transcended all boundaries....
The concept of the annihilation of an entire people, as distinguished
from their subjugation, was unprecedented; never before in human
history had genocide been an all-pervasive government policy
unaffected by territorial or economic advantage and unchecked by moral
or religious constraints....
The HolocaustThe Holocaust was not simply a throwback to medieval torture or
archaic barbarism, but a thoroughly modern expression of bureaucratic
organization, industrial management, scientific achievement, and
technological sophistication. The entire apparatus of the German
bureaucracy was marshaled in the service of the extermination
process.[4]
The Department of Defense (DOD) used this definition as the foundation
of goals for DRVH programs. In its Guide for Annual Commemorative
Observances, stressing that remembrance programs must remember the
horror of the Holocaust in specific anti-Jewish terms, but not only in
those terms: remembrance programs must understand that the lessons of
the Holocaust include a rejection of all forms of discrimination,
prejudice, bigotry, and hatred:

The HolocaustThe Holocaust and Anti-Semitism
The HolocaustThe Holocaust was an event contemporaneous in large part with World
War II -- but separate from it. In fact, the
Final SolutionFinal Solution often took
precedence over the war effort -- as trains, personnel, and material
needed at the front were not allowed to be diverted from death camp
assignments.
On a very basic level, therefore, the Holocaust must be confronted in
terms of the specific evil of anti-Semitism -- virulent hatred of the
Jewish people and the Jewish faith. An immediate response to the
Holocaust must be a commitment to combat prejudice wherever it might
exist.
The HolocaustThe Holocaust and Humanity
From the Holocaust, we begin to understand the dangers of all forms of
discrimination, prejudice, and bigotry; hatreds which, in their
extreme forms, can lead to mass slaughter and genocide -- and, on the
personal level, can endanger our ethical being.
From the Holocaust, we can learn the way evil can be commonplace and
acceptable -- so that no one takes a stand until it is too late.
From the Holocaust we can examine humans as victims and executioners,
oppressors and liberators, collaborators and bystanders, rescuers, and
witnesses.
From the Holocaust, we are reminded that humans can exhibit both
depravity and heroism. The victims of Nazi persecution demonstrated
tremendous spiritual fortitude and resistance. There was also the
physical and spiritual heroism of those who risked their lives to save
others.
From the Holocaust, we must remember the depths to which humanity
might sink; but then we must remember, as well, the heights to which
we might aspire.
On April 18, 2007, in a DRVH ceremony held in the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum, President
George W. BushGeorge W. Bush delivered an address that
linked definitions and words—including the "new word", genocide,
that had come out of the Holocaust experience—to the challenge to
remember:

This is a place devoted to memory. Inside this building are etched the
words of the Prophet Isaiah: "You are my witness." As part of this
witness, these walls show how one of the world's most advanced nations
embraced a policy aimed at the annihilation of the Jewish people.
These walls help restore the humanity of the millions who were loaded
into trains and murdered by men who considered themselves cultured.
And these walls remind us that the Holocaust was not inevitable; it
was allowed to gather strength and force only because of the world's
weakness and appeasement in the face of evil.
Today, we call what happened "genocide", but when the Holocaust
started, this word did not yet exist. In a 1941 radio address,
Churchill spoke of the horrors the Nazis were visiting on innocent
civilians in Russia. He said, "We are in the presence of a crime
without a name." It is an apt description of the evil that followed
the swastika. Mankind had long experience with savagery and slaughter
before. Yet in places such as Auschwitz and Dachau and Buchenwald, the
world saw something new and terrible: the state-sanctioned
extermination of a people, carried out with the chilling industrial
efficiency of a so-called modern nation.
Some may be tempted to ask: Why have a museum dedicated to such a dark
subject? The men and women who built this museum will tell you:
Because evil is not just a chapter in history; it is a reality in the
human heart. So this museum serves as a living reminder of what
happens when good and decent people avert their eyes from hatred and
murder. It honors those who died by serving as the conscience for
those who live. And it reminds us that the words "never again" do not
refer to the past; they refer to the future.
You who are survivors know why the Holocaust must be taught to every
generation. You who lost your families to the gas chambers of Europe
watch as Jewish cemeteries and synagogues across that continent are
defaced and defiled. You who bear the tattoos of death camps hear the
leader of Iran declare that the Holocaust is a myth. You who have
found refuge in a Jewish homeland know that tyrants and terrorists
have vowed to wipe it from the map. And you who have survived evil
know that the only way to defeat it is to look it in the face and not
back down.

In addition to coordinating the National Civic Commemoration,
ceremonies and educational programs during the week of the DRVH are
regularly held throughout the country, sponsored by Governors, Mayors,
veterans groups, religious groups, schools, and military ships and
stations throughout the world. In addition, government organizations
often sponsor programs of their own, including an annual Federal
Interagency Holocaust Remembrance Program, in Washington, D.C..
Each year, the USHMM designates a special theme for DRVH observances,
and prepares DRVH materials to support observances and programs
throughout the nation. Themes have included:

2014 - Confronting the Holocaust: American Responses
2013 - Never Again: Heeding the Warning Signs
2012 - Choosing to Act: Stories of Rescue
2011 - Justice and Accountability in the Face of Genocide: What Have
We Learned?
2010 - Stories of Freedom: What You Do Matters
2009 - Never Again: What You Do Matters
2008 - Do Not Stand Silent: Remembering
KristallnachtKristallnacht 1938
2007 - Children in Crisis: Voices From the Holocaust
2006 - Legacies of Justice
2005 - From Liberation to the Pursuit of Justice
2004 - For Justice and Humanity
2003 - For Your Freedom and Ours
2002 - Memories of Courage
2001 - Remembering the Past for the Sake of the Future

As an integral part of the commitment to remember, the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Council and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum have
undertaken a number of additional activities over the years to broaden
public understanding of the Holocaust, to encourage preservation of
artifacts and documents, and to expand scholarship and teaching about
the Holocaust.
One of the earliest events was the 1981 International Liberators
Conference of the Department of State, held in Washington, D.C.
Official delegations came from the
Jewish BrigadeJewish Brigade and the countries of
Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, The Netherlands, New
Zealand, Norway, Polish People's Republic, Socialist Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia, the USSR, and the United Kingdom. Also participating
were World War II veterans from every state in the Union, who had
served in divisions that helped liberate Nazi concentration camps. A
book based on this conference, The Liberators of the Nazi
Concentration Camps, 1945, was published by the Council in 1987.[4]
Military participation[edit]
In 1984, the long-term efforts of a Navy Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Arnold
Resnicoff, to convince the Department of Defense to participate in the
national DRVH were successful. For a number of years he had been
making the case at many levels of military leadership that General
Eisenhower had already initiated a remembrance program when, after
U.S. forces liberated Ohrdruf (a sub-camp of Buchenwald), Eisenhower
called for reporters from the U.S. and U.K. to document evidence of
the Holocaust,[citation needed] so that, Eisenhower said, the time
would never come when such atrocities could be denied, and reports
about them could be regarded as mere propaganda. Additionally,
Eisenhower's words -- that the American GI did not always understand
what he was fighting for, so he should see this evidence, to
understand, at least, what he was fighting against [4]—became,
Resnicoff successfully argued, the foundation of an historic military
effort to remember and learn from the Holocaust that today's military
had the duty to honor and carry on.
Efforts to drive military involvement took a significant step forward
when Colonel Harvey T. Kaplan, U.S. Army, the Executive Director of
the Defense Equal Opportunity Council, lent his strong support to the
effort, and on April 1, 1984, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger
signed a memorandum to the military services, urging the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military commanders to participate
in the annual program for the first time.[6] To support military
programs, the
United States Navy Chaplain CorpsUnited States Navy Chaplain Corps created the first
military resource materials for programs and observances (Horror and
Hope: Americans Remember the Holocaust).[7] Later, the Department of
Defense, in cooperation with the United Holocaust Memorial Council,
and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, created the official
Department of Defense Guide[8] for remembrance ceremonies on all U.S.
military ships and stations.[9]

Rabbi Seymour Siegel (center), then Executive Director of the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Council, meets the Sixth Fleet Commander, Vice
Admiral Edward Martin (right), and Assistant Sixth Fleet Chaplain
Arnold ResnicoffArnold Resnicoff (left), to discuss the participation of U.S. Navy
Sixth Fleet ships in the U.S. annual Days of Remembrance of the
Victims of the Holocaust. USS Puget Sound, Gaeta, Italy, 1984.

Support for continued military involvement in this effort included the
President in his role as Commander-in-Chief, and both the first and
second editions of the Department of Defense Guide included signed
Presidential letters endorsing the effort. In 1984, the first official
year of military involvement, Rabbi Seymour Siegel, Executive Director
of the
United StatesUnited States Holocaust Memorial Council, met Vice Admiral
Edward Martin, Commander,
United StatesUnited States Sixth Fleet.[10] As a result
of that meeting, the first shipboard Holocaust Days of Remembrance
Ceremony was conducted on board USS Puget Sound (AD-38), the
Sixth Fleet Flagship, during a port visit to Málaga, Spain.[11]
The DOD Guide included background information on the history of the
DRVH and a sample ceremony for military installations. It also
included materials that could be used in remembrance and educational
programs and ceremonies, divided into eight sections: (1) The
Liberators; (2) The Horror; (3) The Process of Annihilation; (4)
Bystanders and Collaborators; (5) The Response; (6) Resistance and
Rescue; (7) The Shadow; (8) America Remembers.
The cover of the DOD Guide featured a photograph of the sculpture,
Liberation, depicting an American soldier carrying a Holocaust victim.
The Guide includes this description of the "cover illustration:

Dedicated on May 30, 1985, the fifteen foot, two-ton bronze sculpture,
Liberation, is the creation of the late Nathan Rapoport, the
Polish-born artist who died on June 4, 1987. His artistic goal was to
embody in bronze a daring vision: in the face of sorrow and tragedies,
he asserted that hope can triumph despite atrocity. The sculpture is
located in Liberty State Park, New Jersey, which forms a triangle with
the
Statue of LibertyStatue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
Liberation depicts an American soldier carrying a survivor out of a
concentration camp. The chests of the rescuer and rescued are joined,
as if sharing one heart. The way that the survivor's body is cradled
in the arms of his liberator reflects comfort and trust.
Liberation is a testament to the Americans who liberated the camps,
and it is a memorial to those who perished. But it is also a symbol of
the strong helping the weak, not persecuting them. It is a vision of
one human being supporting another. It is a tribute to the best of
America's dreams: freedom, compassion, bravery, and -- above all --
hope.
Remembering[edit]
In 1989, the year the revised Department of Defense Guide for DRVH
observances, was issued, President
George H. W. BushGeorge H. W. Bush summed up the
goal not only for military participation, but for the annual National
Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, as a whole:

Our challenge today is to insist that time will not become the Nazis'
friend, that time will not fade our sense of specificity, the
uniqueness of the Holocaust, that time will not lead us to make the
Holocaust into an abstraction. Our challenge today is to remember the
Holocaust, for if we remember we will, as our soldiers did, look its
evil in the face.... For memory is our duty to the past, and memory is
our duty to the future.[4]

On April 24, 2017, President
Donald TrumpDonald Trump issued Proclamation 9594:
Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust, 2017.[12][13][14]
See also[edit]

Benediction for the 1987 National Civic Commemoration in the Capitol
Rotunda.
Holocaust Timeline
Timeline of America's reaction to the Holocaust
Holocaust Timeline Video on YouTube
Holocaust Remembrance Project
Yad VaShemYad VaShem website
USHMM Office of Survivor Affairs
United NationsUnited Nations Holocaust Remembrance Site
The HolocaustThe Holocaust in Civil Religion: The History of Memory
President Carter's remarks upon signing the resolution establishing
DRVH, September 1978
President Carter's remarks, DRVH, April 1979
President Ronald Reagan, first DRVH Civic Commemoration, 1981
President Clinton's remarks at a reception for the official opening of
the U.S.Holocaust Memorial Museum, April 1993
Remarks of President George W. Bush, USHMM, April 2001
Remarks by Mrs. Laura Bush, wife of President George W. Bush, at the
10th anniversary of the USHMM, June 2003
Address by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, DRVH National
Civic Commemoration, 2004
President George W. Bush, Apr 2007, Holocaust Memorial Museum
Speech by President Barack Obama, DRVH Civic Commemoration, 2009
Speech by General David Petraeus, DRVH Civic Commemoration, Apr 15,
2010.
Video: 2010 DRVH Ceremony, Capitol Rotunda

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